Boston health journalists have little use for social media
January 18, 2010
Much enjoyed hearing members of the Boston health care press admit (boast?) that they have almost zero use for social media.
Speaking on a panel at last week’s meeting of the Publicity Club of the New England, journalists from the Boston Business Journal (BBJ), Dow Jones Newswires, the Boston Herald and WBZ-TV) said they don’t “get” Twitter--don’t have time for it, and can’t see why anyone would want to use it.
Jon Kamp, who covers medical technology and energy for Dow Jones said, “I’m 35 going on 100. I don’t get it; I don’t know what to do with it. When I’m 100, I hope I’ll be saying the same thing.”
Brad Perriello, executive editor the year-old MassDevice.com, an online business journal covering the device industry, said he mainly posts news feeds to attract readers to the publication’s Web site.
Ryan McBride, a correspondent for Xconomy, a national online publication with bureaus in Boston, Seattle and San Diego, said he follows certain industry leaders on Twitter but rarely contributes, himself.
Several said they have linked-in accounts that they barely use and and none use Facebook professionally.
” Facebook is to show people pictures of my kid,” Kamp said.
McBride described Linked-in as “an online Rolodex that’s full of people I don’t talk to much. Facebook is friends and family and all the people in high school whom I didn’t know were my friends.”
Julie Donnelly of the BBJ can’t see the point of posting on Facebook. “I’m not that interesting,” she said.
Debbie Kim of WBZ-TV said she doesn’t have time and Christine McConville of the Herald, said that, as an investigative reporter, she doesn’t think it’s a good idea to make public the details of her life. Plus, “I can barely return my emails, get enough exercise, see my friends. I certainly don’t have time for [Facebook]. “
She does, however, enjoy contributing to videos that appear online every three weeks or so.
The conversation was moderated by Michal Regunberg, vice president of Solomon McCown & Co, a Boston public relations firm. Regunberg’s questions focused on the ways in which cutbacks and other changes in the media are affecting coverage.
All of the journalists agreed that the national debate over health reform has been the focus of their coverage in recent months (and that they’re tired of it).
All said they are working with less time, fewer resources and greater demands to produce more. As a result, they have less time for research or feature writing.
McConville said she must write two stories a day for the Herald. McBride covers two different beats for Xconomy. Donnelly writes for both the Boston Business Journal and Mass High Tech and is responsible for breaking stories on line as well as in print. Debbie Kim, medical producer for WBZ-TV, must sometimes produce as many as four pieces in a single a day.
Kamp mentioned that in the past, Dow Jones’ headquarters was relegated to offices in New Jersey but now shares the New York City newsroom of the Wall Street Journal–and that, in many newsrooms, there is tension over which stories should be posted online immediately and which should be held for the print version of the paper.
All of the above means that anyone trying to get coverage faces huge competition for reporters attention and must provide information that is extremely clear and to the point, the journalists agreed.
The discussion made me glad to be out of the pressure cooker journalism has increasingly become–but happy to see a high level of competence, dedication and concern for truth in the Boston press corps.
——-Anita M. Harris
HarrisComBlog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer and Ithaca Diaries Blog.
Filed in journalism, media, new media, newspapers, public relations, publishing, social media
Tags: BBJ, Boston Business Journal, Boston Herald, Brad Perriello, Chrstine McConville, Debbi Kim, Dow Jones, Jon Kamp, journalism, journalists and twitter, Julie Donnelly, Mass Device, new media, Publicity Club of new England, Ryan McBride, social media, Twitter, Wall Street Journal, WBZ-TV, Xconomy
Vooks
October 2, 2009
I read with interest Motoko Rich’s September 30 2009 New York Times article on Vooks–a hybrid “literary” form “mashing together text, Web and video features. “
She describes publisher Simon and Schuster’s release of fitness and diet and beauty books that include videos on how to perform exercises or make skin lotion. Also, Anthony Zuicker’s novel “Level 26, Dark Origins, published on paper, as an e-book and in audio, with a Web component that allows readers to watch brief videos adding to the plot.
The online comments–101 of them–range mainly from skeptical to negative.
John in New York writes, “Should we still call them books?”
Val in Baltimore suggests we’ll soon see “A nobel prize…in viterature!”
Mary the Trainer from Texas writes that the best part of ”reading a novel is creating the scenes in one’s mind based upon what the author has written.”
According to R Weber in Park Slope, ”Publishers –– all corporate hacks these days, with quotas to meet, bearing little resemble to publishers of old who thrived some years, got by in lean years –– have so little imagination & entrepreneurial drive, that idiocies like this are the best they can come up with. The truism proves true once more, “Pay peanuts, get monkeys.”
I scrolled through pages of comments in hopes of weighing in–but found that the comment box had closed.
What I would have said is that as an author, former radio and television producer, photographer, and musician, I’m thrilled and energized by the prospect of being able to merge media in order to give readers/viewers a fuller experience than is available through any single medium on its own.
In research Ithaca Diaries, a book (or something) based on journals I kept in college in the late 1960s, I was delighted to be able to check my fading memories using video, photos and news accounts I readily found on line. I’ve been struggling to pull my journal entries, letters, photographs and drawings into a linear form–but now it will be possible to include video of the Doors from 1969, Bob Dylan’s 1969 concert on the Isle of Wight; old news footage of the Chicago and Democratic News Conventions, maybe even the shootings at Kent State. Maybe I can even read from the diary entries, aloud–and share tapes of my old professors and friends.
Now all I need to do is figure out how to do this and how to find the time, what it will cost–and whether–and how–it will sell.
I’d welcome YOUR comments.
—Anita Harris
HarrisComblog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish New Cambridge Observer
Filed in Books, media, new media, publishing, technology
Tags: Anita Harris, Books, Cambridge, Cambridge Authors, Harris Communications, Harris Communications Group, HarrisComBlog, Hybrid books, Ma, New Cambridge Observer, public relations, vooks
How to write a winning blog for SEO
September 3, 2009
At the September meeting of the Cambridge Search Engine Optimization Meetup Group Chris Baggot of Compendium Blogware, advised a tech savvy group of 72 that key words and multiple pages are crucial to winning high blog rankings on search engines like Google and Bing.
Group members interrupted Baggot numerous times with questions. (They didn’t want to believe that Compendium’s platform, which focuses on providing many pages, each with its own keywords, could work better than WordPress). But Baggot held his own.
Key takeaways:
- Eighty percent of activity on the Web is search–by people who are looking for solutions to particular problems– using keywords.
- Bing, and, now, Google, are increasingly using content, as opposed to links, in ranking the importance of particular posts.
- Domain names don’t matter: blog titles, and keywords do
- Have as many focused blog pages as possible–hundreds, if you can, each with its own main keyword
- For consultants: tell stories of problems you have solved
- Search engines “like” frequency and fresh pages; write short but often
- Blogs should be 100-150words; if you have to more say, write another post
- Include a call to action–give people a way to go forward: have an offer; ask them to sign up for something
Ohmygosh I’m over 150 words!
Here’s my call to action: Contact me at harriscom@harriscom.com if you need communications strategy, media outreach, Web structure and content, a WordPress blog or writing for any medium about almost anything.
–Anita M. Harris
Harriscomblog is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA. We also publish the New Cambridge Observer. Copyright: anita m. harris, 2009
Filed in new media, publishing, social media, technology
Tags: Blog ranking systems, blogging, Cambridge SEO Meeting Group, Cambridge SEO Meetup, Chris Baggot, Compendium, Harris Communications, SEO, SEO Optimization
